The Initial Blow

by Paul Vincent Lee

  ‘Juan who?’

  ‘Don’t know his second name.’

  Healy leant forward on the desk, stared into Joe Turner’s eyes.

  ‘Why do you think Kate had her wedding rings off, Joe?’

  ‘Told you already...don’t know.’

  ‘You carry a photo of Kate, Joe?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘She doesn’t carry one of you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So why you think that is, Joe? Didn’t she love you, Joe? Thinking of leaving you was she, Joe?’

  ‘Better ask her.’ Joe regretted it as soon as he said it.

  ‘Not very nice thing to say, Joe. You glad she’s dead, Joe?’

  ‘Don’t talk bollocks. I loved her.’

  ‘But did she love you, Joe? Scorned partners do crazy things sometimes. Did you do something crazy, Joe?’

  Joe Turner jumped to his feet, slammed his fist on the table and leaned forward. Healy never flinched.

  ‘This is shit! Fuck this!’

  ‘Joe, sit down. The sooner we get this over with the better.’ Susan Dornan was the ‘Good Cop.’

  ‘Joe, do you think Kate may have been meeting someone in Glasgow? A man.’

  Joe slumped back into his chair, his anger dissipated along with his spirit.

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘But it’s possible?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘Does the name Tunstall mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, where is it?’

  ‘Cool, Joe, cool’ thought Healy.

  ‘You’ve never seen Kate wearing a gold necklace with the name Tunstall on it?’

  ‘Told you, no, Tunstall?’

  ‘If Kate was meeting a man, can you think who it might be?

  ‘No idea, honest. I still can’t get my head around the whole thing.’

  ‘Did she have any men friends in Glasgow, pals from the old days, that sort of thing?’

  Joe looked up; he seemed to be almost pleased.

  ‘There was one guy she used to meet with when she was in Glasgow, ex-boyfriend but lot older than her. She told me all about him; married, kids, a bit of a sado according to Kate.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Pete something. Hold on ....Old Grey Whistle Test, I called him........Harris, that’s it, Peter Harris.’

  ‘Did she tell you she was going to meet him on this trip?’

  ‘Yeah, no, shit I don’t know.’

  ‘You going to be in Glasgow a few more days? ’

  ‘Yeah, a few more days.’

  ‘We’ll need a sample of your DNA, Joe, for elimination purposes. OK?’

  Joe looked at me. I nodded.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You still staying in the B&B in Partick?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s close to Martha, but not too close if you know what I mean. Might move though, think the manager, cleaner or whoever have helped themselves to a couple of things. Not certain, though; might just have lost them; been drinking a lot.’

  ‘How do you get on with Martha, anyway, Joe?’

  ‘OK I suppose. I always felt she thought Kate could have made more of herself if she hadn’t hooked up with me. Maybe she was right. Doesn’t really matter now, though, does it?’

  ‘You ever hit Kate, Joe?’ Healy asked quietly.

  ‘Go to hell.’

  I interrupted.

  ‘I think we should leave it at that, if you don’t mind.’

  Joe Turner knew he was smirking, knew he shouldn’t be, but he hated cops especially the arrogant ones like “this tosser Healy.”

  Anyway, the odd slap is not hitting, not really.

  As we all left the interview room, we all knew that Joe’s DNA was not for elimination purposes.

  ***

  Boom Boom was relatively sober. As sober as someone who had drunk what he had drunk over the last ten years can be.

  He was sitting in his new home by the river and had all his possessions beside him. It was always a source of amazement to him but, no matter what seemed to happen in his life and for no matter how long he spent in his “other place”, his possessions were always there by his side.

  Since discovering the girl’s body he had managed to pretty much eliminate her from his thoughts, one way or the other. It was his dinner time. He didn’t know what time it was for other people but that was the time it was for him. He sat scooping tuna out of a tin with his new knife. He couldn’t quite recall now where he had gotten it, but was grateful for it none the less.

  He had thought about moving on, right on, England maybe because, although he didn’t remember exactly why, he knew he was in trouble. He knew that he had encountered death many times, touched it, sometimes loved it but he had never caused it, never delivered it.

  What about this time? So many blanks, so many questions, so many doubts. Father Tobin should have lived, why did God do that to one of his servants? His bare arms enveloping him, his soothing words whispered from behind, their gentle secret.

  He knew the main thing was his mother not finding out what he’d done, whatever it was. He hated the never ending hours alone in his room and his mother’s shrill voice repeating over and over that: Colin was such a naughty boy.

  Well he had a tin of tea now, he couldn’t have been too bad, couldn’t have done it.

  Professor Colin Banks’ mother had been dead for 15 years.

  ***

  A picture of Kate Turner and the necklace, “Tunstall,” had appeared in the Evening Times and on Reporting Scotland a couple of evenings before and that had worried him a bit but coverage was brief and patchy. The fact that Tunstall was “foreign” and that one person a week is stabbed to death in Scotland added to the apathy. Azrael’s only concern was the hotel. He’d paid cash; and the receptionist was foreign and couldn’t even talk properly, but he harboured a nagging doubt. He had thought for a moment of going to the hotel to check on her; maybe pass her on the pavement, see if she recognised him. He decided not to. The Lord would guide him.

  ***

  Dornan had gone to the machine for a coffee after letting Joe Turner go and was walking back to her office when she caught up with Healy talking to John Frame. Frame had just taken a call from the fingerprint people saying that two sets of prints from the call box in the Clyde Valley had been matched with records. They belonged to a: ‘Peter Harris and a Colin Banks.’

  ‘Did you say fucking Peter Harris?’ asked Healy.

  ‘Yes…..and a Colin Banks’ replied Frame.

  ‘What’s Harris on record for?’

  ‘That’s the thing, Matt. Harris was questioned over the suspicious death of his first wife but nothing ever stuck. His prints are on record, though, for giving his second wife a slap. He was charged, but his wife didn’t want to pursue it. Banks is just a couple of vagrancy related things.’

  Frame handed Dornan Harris’ address.

  ‘Get two uniforms to meet me and D.S. Healy outside in no more than five minutes,’ said Susan Dornan: ‘Oh, and Banks. Where does he live?’

  ‘No fixed abode, ma’am.’

  ‘Right. Check with hostels etc., but where she stayed is the priority.’

  Matt Healy was pensive in the car on the way to Uddingston to question Peter Harris. He knew from experience that murder enquiries are either wrapped up within weeks, or not at all. The fact that Peter Harris was an ex-boyfriend; albeit a long time ago, of Kate Turner, also fitted in nicely with his oft trumpeted notion of victims already knowing their killers. However, he still harboured a deep suspicion over Joe Turner’s part in all this.

  ‘What you thinking, Matt?’ Susan Dornan enquired.

  ‘Not sure,’ replied Healy. ‘If this guy’s semen is a match with one of the samples then it’s looking good, but I still have a stone in my shoe over Joe Turner.’

  ‘A stone in your shoe?’

  ‘Yeah, you never seen “The Godfather” then?’

  ‘You think he did it? Flew over, murdered his cheating wife a
nd then flew back again, all within forty eight hours.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just doesn’t seem feasible to me. Sorry.’

  ‘We’ll see. I’ve got French checking passenger lists.’

  The two police cars arrived outside Peter Harris’ house. Healy and Dornan went to the door. White plastic, with matching window frames. The two constables waited around the back, just in case Harris decided to run. Healy pressed the doorbell.

  ‘Mr Peter Harris?’ it was Dornan who asked. Softly, softly Susan.

  ‘Yes.’

  Both Healy and Dornan noticed that Harris looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

  ‘We’d like to ask you some questions concerning the death of Kate Turner. We understand you knew her.’

  Peter Harris had read of Kate’s murder in the Evening Times. He didn’t know what mode he was now in; denial, panic, distraught, defensive.

  ‘Yes, yes, I did. My wife and children will be back soon, can we do this at the station?’

  That was a new one on Dornan. Usually the last place a suspect wanted to go was away from familiar surroundings, but all to the good. Peter Harris got his coat and the entourage entered the Pitt Street office car park half an hour later. The interview room used this time was not the same one Joe Turner and Martha Reid had been in, but it was equally pleasant to the eye.

  ‘Will I need a lawyer?’ Peter Harris asked quietly.

  ‘Don’t know...will you?’ It was Healy asking the questions now.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, let’s get started then.’

  ‘Tell us about your relationship with Kate, Peter.’

  ‘We’ve been friends for years.....childhood sweethearts.’

  ‘Well her childhood at least,’ Dornan suggested trying to elicit a reaction.

  ‘Not in the way you’re implying’ countered Harris.

  ‘What about recent times?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Well, when was the last time you saw her for instance?’

  ‘OK. I know I should have come forward sooner but I have a wife...you understand.’

  ‘You didn’t come forward at all, Peter; we came looking for you.’

  ‘Oh I knew you would. It was no secret that Kate and I met up occasionally when she was back in Glasgow.’

  ‘So, did you meet up this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When and where?’

  ‘We met up for a quick drink and chat early on the Saturday evening.’

  ‘The Saturday evening?’

  ‘Of the weekend she apparently went missing.’

  ‘You’re telling us you met up with a woman who ends up murdered a couple of hours later; and it didn’t cross your mind we might want to speak to you? Where did you meet, go?’

  ‘I picked her up from outside the Superstore at Celtic Park. That idiot of a husband of hers is football mad. She was buying some stuff, posters, that kind of thing for his pubs.’

  ‘You know Joe Turner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pretty strong opinion of him, though.’

  ‘Kate told me.’

  ‘What, Kate told you her husband was an idiot?’

  ‘No, not exactly but over the years they’ve grown apart. She was always too good for him.’

  Dornan noticed that Peter Harris now looked quite relaxed, pleased to talk about Kate.

  ‘Where did you go after you picked her up?’

  ‘The Four Pillars, out in the Clyde Valley.’

  ‘Long way to go for a quick chat and drink, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘It’s one of the places we used to go to when we were courting.’

  ‘Nice. Romantic?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And were you trying to be romantic, Peter?’

  ‘No, not in the way you’re meaning anyway.’

  ‘What way’s that?’

  ‘Sexual. There was nothing sexual involved. Just nostalgia.’

  ‘Nothing sexual?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kate had sexual encounters with at least two different men over that 48 hour period, Peter. Anything to say about that?’

  Peter Harris looked straight into the eyes of Susan Dornan. She could not determine if there was fear, disbelieve or defiance there; but she could tell that Peter Harris’ world had changed forever.

  ***

  John Frame and Paul Allan were now working on two main aspects of the case; where Kate Turner stayed on the Friday night and tracing Colin Banks. The problem was the hotel, or wherever, was a dead end. If the thinking was that she was kipping up with some guy; then her name wouldn’t be shown anywhere anyway and there are literally thousands of people passing through Glasgow every week-end. If a photo in the paper, and her picture on the telly, hadn’t generated any leads; and with not even her mum or husband coming up with any suggestions about where she might have stayed, then what chance did they have? Paul Allan decided to concentrate on Colin Banks. The link to the murder was more tenuous than the hotel, but he might get a result and then go back to the hotel thing on a high. He had dug out the file on Colin Banks and it was startling to say the least. He might be a down and out alky now but at one time he was anything but. Professor Colin Banks was at one time a respected surgeon at Glasgow’s Ross Hall Hospital.

  It didn’t say anything in his file as such, but Allan felt that: something catastrophic must have happened about 15 or so years ago to cause this scale of fall from grace.

  Allan had checked all the hostels and spoken to some of the down and outs that lived under the arches and derelict sites around Glasgow, but nothing came up. He decided to talk to the hospital. It was a long shot, but he might get some useful background information. He phoned the hospital and, after a slight delay while the receptionist enquired who would be the best person for him to speak to; he found himself slightly surprised to be put through to Mary Stringer, one of the hospitals Clinical Psychologists.

  Allan explained why he was calling; and was even more surprised by Mary stringer’s response.

  ‘You’d better come in and see me, officer. I certainly can’t discuss this over the phone.’

  Allan had really only been going to try and find out where Banks lived but something told him there was more. Paul Allan had never been more right.

  ***

  After giving a DNA sample, Peter Harris had been released. Dornan and Healy both knew they could have pressed him further, but felt they wanted the DNA result before they really put the pressure on. They were both confident Harris wouldn’t try to run. Dornan had also sent a couple of officers to pick up Joe Turner and bring him in for “an update”; and to allow Healy to follow-up on his conviction that Joe Turner was somehow involved in the murder.

  ‘Where’s boy wonder?’ Healy asked no-one in particular.

  ‘Out all day, sir. Trying to locate that Colin Banks guy, I think,’ DC Jack T’Baht replied.

  ‘Think John Frame left something on your desk, though, sir,’ DC Jill French added.

  He looked at the note on his desk and was, for a short while, glad Dornan had let Harris go and was bringing Joe Turner back in. He showed the note to Susan Dornan and smiled.

  ‘What am I always telling you?’

  Dornan just shook her head.

  ***

  When Joe called me to say the police wanted to speak to him again, I wasn’t surprised. I had resolved that, when Joe’s inevitable call came, I was going to tell him that I couldn’t represent him. I would make up some legal explanation, but Joe would know the truth. But when it came to the crunch, I felt I couldn’t let a life-long friend down. Also, he was entitled to representation, a defence, and I, did not actually know that he had done anything wrong at all. I therefore, found myself sitting in the same interview room as I had a couple of days previously, an unidentifiable liquid from the coffee machine in the hall in a paper cup in front of me.

  ‘Afternoon, Joe. How you bearing up?’

 
‘Just great,’ Joe replied.

  ‘How’s Edinburgh these days?’

  Joe sat and stared. He knew he was in trouble; but his spirit had been slowly ebbing away over the last few days anyway, and he actually felt a sense of relief that he could just be straight now.

  Straight-ish.

  ‘Look. OK. I lied. I was with someone....a woman...while my wife was being murdered. Would you broadcast that?’

  ‘I would if it eliminated me from being a suspect.’

  ‘What? Are you serious? You think I killed Kate?’

  ‘You’ve lied already; and told us things weren’t great between you, and agreed Kate could have been meeting a man here so ....’

  ‘I loved her. I....,’ Joe was wilting fast, the full realisation of his stupid plan enveloping him.

  ‘What is the woman’s name, Joe? The one you say you were with.’

  ‘Look, she’s married. I don’t want...oh, Jesus.’ Joe’s head was in his hands, his tears glistening through his fingers.

  ‘So let me get this right. You are seeing a woman and you want to keep that fact from your wife. She’s flying off to her mum thousands of miles away and so, out of all the places in the world you could take your lady friend, you practically follow behind your wife ?’

  ‘She’s cultured, wanted to see the castle, all that shit.’

  ‘Understand what she sees in you, then,’ Dornan said. I could have objected to that comment but, in all honesty, I could see her point. I also still found her very attractive.

  Joe Turner just stared.

  Over the next half hour Joe gave the woman’s name and how she could be contacted. He begged Healy to make sure the Spanish police were discrete when they went to question her. He also swore he never came through to Glasgow. We left the police office and parted on the street outside. I told Joe I had to get back to the office. In truth, I was going for a drink. I just didn’t want him with me. I had to think.